Metal in iOS 9 will bring smoother animations

[XTheLancerX]

In the keynote video go to 1:07:15 they briefly talk about Metal. 1.6x faster at drawing and 50% less CPU when drawing now that it's used for core animation.

Also a quick blurb about Metal on the iOS 9 webpage.

"Faster and more responsive.
The apps in iOS 9 now take advantage of Metal, making more efficient use of the CPU and GPU to deliver faster scrolling, smoother animation and better overall performance. Email, messages, web pages and PDFs render faster. And multitasking features on iPad feel fluid and natural."

The thing that gets me, is in the keynote it seems like I remember them mentioning Metal improving animations and everything throughout iOS, where on the website it says "The apps in iOS 9 now take advantage of Metal" it goes on about smoother animation and better overall performance, but for all we know, they're only talking about the apps inside iOS 9, like Safari or Messages (looking at you, laggy tab view on iPad in Safari and laggy message send animation/scrolling/rotating in Messages)

I'm assuming they're putting Metal in everything, including the regular springboard animations, blurring effects, etc, but the way it's described on their website and based on the beta so far, you can't be too sure if that's actually the case.

 

[RebornProphet]

The thing that gets me, is in the keynote it seems like I remember them mentioning Metal improving animations and everything throughout iOS, where on the website it says "The apps in iOS 9 now take advantage of Metal" it goes on about smoother animation and better overall performance, but for all we know, they're only talking about the apps inside iOS 9, like Safari or Messages (looking at you, laggy tab view on iPad in Safari and laggy message send animation/scrolling/rotating in Messages)

I'm assuming they're putting Metal in everything, including the regular springboard animations, blurring effects, etc, but the way it's described on their website and based on the beta so far, you can't be too sure if that's actually the case.

Yeah, I think we've perhaps assumed too much from the Metal announcement.

Although, you'd think that surely Apple would remove any graphical overheads from the system UI animations since they're actively promoting the use of Metal from developers.

What will make or break iOS 9 for me is the Air 2 performance. That thing is just so slick and responsive on iOS 8.4.1 and I'm not giving that performance up just for split screen multitasking.

 

[stevemiller]

I know this is going to sound like blasphemy, but I recalled reading way back when that windows phone made smart use of animation to *hide* system lag. I feel like if apple can properly decouple most animation to the gpu, this is a design point they really need to pay closer attention to.

a lot of frustration for me comes from pressing something and not getting intermediate feedback. the UI design relies too heavily on the outcome of an operation being immediate. but on anything other than the newest hardware (pretty much ONLY the iPad air 2 at this point) the UI will awkwardly skip from what appears to have been a non-registered input to an output.

and this is not just an aesthetic issue. i have regularly run into situations where i tap an interface element, nothing seems to have happened, so i'll try to press it again, but in that instant, it will have refreshed to a new screen and my tap will then trigger something on the new screen that i didn't want. (this is especially infuriating when that second tap triggers is in fact an ad that boots you into the app store for some junk you have no interest in)

 

[Narcaz]

I know this is going to sound like blasphemy, but I recalled reading way back when that windows phone made smart use of animation to *hide* system lag. I feel like if apple can properly decouple most animation to the gpu, this is a design point they really need to pay closer attention to.

a lot of frustration for me comes from pressing something and not getting intermediate feedback. the UI design relies too heavily on the outcome of an operation being immediate. but on anything other than the newest hardware (pretty much ONLY the iPad air 2 at this point) the UI will awkwardly skip from what appears to have been a non-registered input to an output.

and this is not just an aesthetic issue. i have regularly run into situations where i tap an interface element, nothing seems to have happened, so i'll try to press it again, but in that instant, it will have refreshed to a new screen and my tap will then trigger something on the new screen that i didn't want. (this is especially infuriating when that second tap triggers is in fact an ad that boots you into the app store for some junk you have no interest in)

I can totally understand your problem. Apple made changes to the responsiveness with iOS 7, which are still present in iOS 8/9. There is a good youtube comparison video from William Van Hecke (user experience lead for the omni group):

He wrote an article about this: http://heta.metalbat.com/visible-ui-had-better-respond-to-input-right-away/

"Maybe the most remarkable thing about the original iPhone to me, and the subsequent evolution of iOS, was how every single gesture you made was reflected instantaneously and realistically on the screen. There was no lagging, no obvious dropped frames, no hanging."

"You can look at these as performance bugs, or say that the animations are just too long. But what was so brilliant about early iOS was that it enforced UI design that made the system feel faster, even when it wasn’t actually fast. It never threw away your input. It waited to show you stuff until it could fulfill the promise of that stuff. So even when performance was slow, at least you could trust the system to let you know when it was ready, and to try to accept your input while it was working on something else."

 

[Stickharuhi]

Come we all go to Apple Bug Report site. And tell this fack animation since iOS 7

 

[XTheLancerX]

I can totally understand your problem. Apple made changes to the responsiveness with iOS 7, which are still present in iOS 8/9. There is a good youtube comparison video from William Van Hecke (user experience lead for the omni group):

He wrote an article about this: http://heta.metalbat.com/visible-ui-had-better-respond-to-input-right-away/

I totally agree. I think it's just because the UI animations decelerate too slowly. Well, this isn't the case for the iOS 6 vs iOS 7.1/8/9 app open/close animation though because those are roughly the same speed, they just made input not work during the animation where it did before. This, I think is because the UI is so quirky and unreliable that it couldn't handle doing that without glitchy things happening. I remember in iOS 8 on my iPad mini 2, I actually could tap apps while I was exiting to the homescreen via a gesture. It was extremely hard to do it, but when it happened, my iPad would lag, icons would go to the wrong place, etc. The new design just isn't ready for it yet because Apple did everything so sloppily. The animation being different depending on where the app is on the home screen I think is a huge issue.

 

[Salvor Hardin]

Anandtech mentions Metal being used instead of OpenGL ES in core animations and graphics.
"On top of the new features and improvements to existing features in iOS 9, there are also significant improvements to performance. Many of the iOS graphics APIs, including Core Animation and Core Graphics, are now using Metal instead of OpenGL ES on the iOS devices that support Metal. According to Apple this reduces CPU usage, and will improve the overall smoothness of the UI"

Regardless what the end result is, this is and anyone is free to correct me if I'm wrong the first time that performance has been listed as a bulletpoint in a yearly iOS update. Make of that what you will.

 

[shenfrey]

It didn't really : /

 

[Jayson A]

So much for smoother animations. iOS 9GM feels more stuttery sluggish compared to iOS 8.4.1

Great job Apple!

 

[Andres Cantu]

So much for smoother animations. iOS 9GM feels more stuttery sluggish compared to iOS 8.4.1

Great job Apple!

That is a disappointment for sure, I will eat my words about stable releases

I look forward to videos comparing iOS 8.4.1 with iOS 9.

 

[Andres Cantu]

So how is everyone's experience with iOS 9?

 

[Jayson A]

So how is everyone's experience with iOS 9?

Crappy. Don't do it.

 

[Andres Cantu]

Crappy. Don't do it.

Too late, it's laggy for sure.

 

[C DM]

So how is everyone's experience with iOS 9?

It differs, as is usually the case.

 

[Merkie]

Does this promise qualify for the biggest lie of the century? I think so. A7 en A8 devices are actually much worse, lol. A6 about the same.

 

[I7guy]

Does this promise qualify for the biggest lie of the century? I think so. A7 en A8 devices are actually much worse, lol. A6 about the same.

A7 and a8 iPhones are at least the same.

 

[Andres Cantu]

Does this promise qualify for the biggest lie of the century? I think so. A7 en A8 devices are actually much worse, lol. A6 about the same.

I would say it's a big lie, but not the biggest. At least the iPhone 6 seemed to perform a bit better when going back in Safari. It wouldn't reload as often (in my opinion).

 

[Jayson A]

I would say it's a big lie, but not the biggest. At least the iPhone 6 seemed to perform a bit better when going back in Safari. It wouldn't reload as often (in my opinion).

That has nothing to do with animations.

 

[Andres Cantu]

That has nothing to do with animations.

True, but it was nice to see nonetheless. I guess things will get a bit smoother in later iOS 9.x releases, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[iOSBry]

Come we all go to Apple Bug Report site. And tell this fack animation since iOS 7

Please file a bug report at http://bugreport.apple.com/ for any dropped frames/lagging/stuttering, etc., for each iOS app you observe it in. It's the only way to get it resolved.

iOSBry

 

[XTheLancerX]

It's awful that the A7 and A8 devices are suffering so bad. Metal was supposed to make them butter smooth. Maybe Metal just hasn't been totally worked in for everything yet, hasn't been fully optimized, etc.

I am starting to assume that everything Apple promises in June is really meant for the final build of said release. Just look at iOS 8, half of the big ticket features didn't make it in until halfway through the release!! Things finally got fleshed out near the end after it was finally containing all the features it was promised, and it was pretty smooth. I wouldn't say perfect by any means, iOS 7.1.2 was still better and iOS 6.1.4 or whatever was still far better than that, even. But still pretty good. Same probably will go for iOS 9. The "smoother animations" they promised will probably not be coming along until 9.2 or later. 9.1 is a marginal improvement, but it mostly is meant for the iPad Pro I believe.

Keep reporting your issues, people. The more they are reported, the higher the priority for Apple to fix them.

 

[Stickharuhi]

It's awful that the A7 and A8 devices are suffering so bad. Metal was supposed to make them butter smooth. Maybe Metal just hasn't been totally worked in for everything yet, hasn't been fully optimized, etc.

I am starting to assume that everything Apple promises in June is really meant for the final build of said release. Just look at iOS 8, half of the big ticket features didn't make it in until halfway through the release!! Things finally got fleshed out near the end after it was finally containing all the features it was promised, and it was pretty smooth. I wouldn't say perfect by any means, iOS 7.1.2 was still better and iOS 6.1.4 or whatever was still far better than that, even. But still pretty good. Same probably will go for iOS 9. The "smoother animations" they promised will probably not be coming along until 9.2 or later. 9.1 is a marginal improvement, but it mostly is meant for the iPad Pro I believe.

Keep reporting your issues, people. The more they are reported, the higher the priority for Apple to fix them.

yes please more report. we need performance for Metal!!

 

[volvic]

sad, that the animations are still crap on 9.3

 

[oldmacs]

sad, that the animations are still crap on 9.3

I don't think my iPad Mini 2 will ever run smoothly. Still stutters opening folders, in cc, dragging down spotlight and opening and closing apps.

 

[mizxco]

I don't think my iPad Mini 2 will ever run smoothly. Still stutters opening folders, in cc, dragging down spotlight and opening and closing apps.

My iPad mini 2 runs smoothly, not fast, but smoothly. User error.